The Witch Must Burn – Danielle Paige

In a review about the first novella, I briefly complained about how the first novella left me with more questions than answered ones. When I found out that there was a second prequel novella, I thought it would answer those questions. I was wrong. Unlike the first novella, which was in Dorothy’s POV, this novella was in Jellia’s, Dorothy’s personal maid, POV. While Jellia could describe the changes that occurred between Ozma’s and Dorothy’s reign, she didn’t know the exact reasons why these changes were occurring. Of course, the most base answer is that Dorothy changed everything, but I wanted to know how or when Dorothy became evil? And if she’s been a pawn of Glinda’s since the original Wizard of Oz? How did the Scarecrow come up with his experiments and how did Dorothy feel about? Pretty much I wanted a more in-depth view of the world that Paige is creating. Sure this world stems from the movie The Wizard of Oz, but I want to know how everything became so twisted and how the main characters felt about this shift?

Nonetheless, this novella does show how Jellia came into contact with the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked (I think that’s the name of the group). However, I was bothered by the fact that Jellia’s interaction with the Order occurred almost exactly the same way Amy (from Dorothy Must Die #1) came to learn about the group. It was like Paige was recycling the scene. In this book, we also get our first glimpse of the machine Glinda uses mine magic that Amy mentioned in the first book. And it’s also briefly mentioned that Glinda has already been mining magic before she had a machine, proof that this Good Witch may be bad.

So even though this novella didn’t provide me with many answers and I’m not a fan of prequels, I will be reading the next one in hopes that at least some of my questions will be answered.